This week, I'm offering you a taste of Paris... My best-selling novel Paris, Rue des Martyrs is free on Amazon through August 31.
To get you started, an excerpt:
Rafael Mendez arrived like a thief in the night at 120 Rue des Martyrs. He ran all the way from the train station, where he had left one small, ragtag suitcase in a rented locker. His sneakers slapped noisily along the cobblestones, then pavement, in time with his own tears and the rain falling from a grim Parisian sky.
It was as if each minute lost counted for everything in his 23-year-old life. He pushed past umbrellas that seemed to tango as they bobbed against one another, old men who chatted with no one in particular, couples laughing, and a few sidewalk café tables left behind to weather the storm.
He was nearly blind to this first vision of the city, and only looked up now and again at the street signs to reassure himself that—yes—he hadn’t lost the Rue des Martyrs. And then he stopped. He pushed wet strands of long, black hair back from his face, wiped away the silly tears of that odd combination of desperation and excitement, and sank down onto a bench facing the address he had imagined all of his life in Colombia.
Now, as the rain soaked through his jeans and his gaze traveled across the street to the only lighted apartment in building 120, his mind returned home. That’s where his quest began, after all. In Bogotá.
As a child, he would play with the emeralds. That was his first memory. Not mother. Not father. Emeralds. Because that was how his life began. His father never wanted to tell Rafael that the French jewelry designer gave birth to him on a trip for those precious stones. He only said it once—grimly—shaking his head and staring at the dark sand under their feet. Rafael remembered looking up at him with widened 10-year-old eyes as they plodded along the dusty trail to where his father would buy the stones. It was Rafael’s first trip there with his father, and in the young boy’s mind, it became a sacred place.
But he couldn’t think of that story right now or those emeralds. It was over. He had to erase every memory from his mind, the images that haunted him at night.
The one remaining light in 120 snapped off, leaving the building in darkness. It would be too late. He was wasting time. His heart raced as he crossed the street between the cars that kicked up muddy water onto his jeans. He ignored the honking horns. He wanted to move forward, and all at once he wanted to travel back. Rafael was frightened. Afraid of what he might learn or might not learn. Never be afraid, his father had hissed into his ear on that first trip for emeralds.
Before he could let his worries swallow him up with one great gulp, he pounded his fist on the heavy, brown-lacquered door that like a clamshell closed the apartments to the world. Nothing. The sound of his fist against the wood reverberated through his entire body, but no one responded. He scolded himself for his own impatience. How could he possibly have expected someone to answer that door at 11 o’clock on a Thursday night?
He placed his hand softly against the handle and sighed, knowing he should leave, yet not able to abandon the glimmer of hope that his problems would be resolved in a matter of hours.
The door creaked open suddenly, and he jumped back.
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